During surgical operations in particular, an incision drape is applied to adhere to the site of the operation, i.e. the region of the skin of the patient in which an incision is to be made. The incision is made simultaneously through the incision drape and through the skin. The incision drape is removed after the operation.
The use of incision drapes has the advantage of increasing the accuracy of incision, of facilitating the handling of the skin around the incision, and of reducing the risk of infection.
Incision drapes are commonly constituted by a piece of flexible film, e.g. of polyurethane, which is cut from a roll. The adhesive face of the incision drape is protected by a backing, usually a sheet of paper which is removed at the moment of use. The two side edges of the incision drape include strips for grasping, e.g. strips of paper or of plastic that facilitate handling during installation on the site of the operation. The strips for grasping are generally secured to the piece of flexible film that constitutes the incision drape via respective lateral margins of said piece of flexible film to which they adhere. They may also be used for removal purposes after the incision drape has been used.
Given the extreme fineness and flexibility of a piece of polyurethane or other flexible film, known incision drapes suffer from the following drawback: when the backing or protection sheet is removed from the incision drape prior to its application on the site of the operation, the flexible film tends to twist and to crumple, with its adhesive face sticking to itself, thereby creating stuck-together creases which make the dressing unsuitable for use. Known products are not easy to handle and the amount of waste due to the adhesive face sticking to itself prior to application on site is large.
To mitigate the above-described drawback, proposals have been made, for example, to provide a dressing in which the entire periphery of the non-adhesive face is provided with a protective strip, e.g. of paper, thereby constituting a frame for laying purposes. The frame is intended to impart a certain amount of stiffness to the dressing prior to its application on site. The dressing is used as follows: the piece of transparent flexible film together with its laying frame disposed on its non-adhesive face are removed from the protective sheet; the dressing held by its frame is applied to the site; and the laying frame is removed.
That proposal constitutes an improvement over known dressings, at least when the dressings are small in size, since the polyurethane window or other flexible film held by the laying frame is very small and the tendency of the polyurethane film to twist and stick to itself is small. That technique is not suitable for incision drapes of larger dimensions, e.g. 15 cm.times.28 cm, since the area of the polyurethane film is too large to avoid the risks of its sticking.
To facilitate installing incision drapes and to increase safety in use, it would be desirable to impart greater stiffness not only to the periphery of the incision drape, but also to its entire area, even though said area is very fine and flexible in nature.